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John Van Kirk's 'Apocalypse Now' accented J. Ray Paradiso's photography in a way that needed nothing more. Together these two artists blended together and gave the Fall 2019 issue a centre for everything else to orbit. Since its publication this piece has been nominated for this year's Best Microfiction Award.

Said last week that Mike Callaghan's work fit seamlessly with the words of Eros Livieratos and gave NUNUM's Fall 2019 Issue an opening slice of perfection with 'Suburbs' so here it only feels right to say that Eros's words slipped right into the imagery of Mike's work and banged out an amazing opening for the Fall 2019 issue.

Mike Callaghan's work fit seamlessly with the words of Eros Livieratos and together they gave NUNUM's Fall 2019 Issue an opening slice of perfection with 'Suburbs'.

Because of the difficult second year of my MFA, I didn’t go straight through to my Ph. D. Instead, I took a year off, finishing up my thesis and looking into different options. I applied for several teaching positions at universities all over the country. I went to creative writing conferences. I took freelance jobs. But none of that was really what I wanted. I’d learned in Dublin that an author only makes about ten cents for every copy sold, and I knew that wasn’t a stand-alone career option, unless I wanted my parents to support me for the rest of my life.

Amanda Conner slipped a little real world reflection our way for NUNUM's Fall 2019 issue with her piece 'The Time Has Come'. The prose is zoomed and tight all by itself but once we blended it up with some Zelffie from Ling Lui & Tianyi Zhang something flipped and we suddenly found ourselves with another favorite.

Rachel Hoffman gifted NUNUM with a slice of conversation that twisted us right round with a sudden loveliness through her piece 'Hunter Gather' in our Summer 2019 issue. 

​Phebe Jewell brought one of her passions to our Summer 2019 issue and the result was 'Paroled', a wonderful spin of a flash that twists and turns just the way we love a story to when it hits NUMUM's pages.

Jodie Filan gave us an updated Marilyn for the cover of our Summer 2019 issue and her piece set the tone for what turned out to be an amazing collection. 

Jodie Filan was born in Saskatoon, Canada in 1992 making her 27 years old today. She is completely self taught. Her social anxiety disorder keeps her very isolated thus unknown. She is currently homeless and addicted to crystal meth.

George L Stein gave us the art work responsible for bringing Rachel Hoffman’s story ‘Hunter Gather’ to life in our Summer 2019 issue. George is a writer and photographer living in Michigan City in Northwest Indiana. George works in both film and digital formats in the urban decay, architecture, fetish, and street photography genres. His emphasis is on composition with the juxtaposition of beauty and decay lying at the center of his aesthetic. Northwest Indiana's rust-belt legacy provides ample locations for industrial backdrops. 

Samantha's piece 'Time Heals All Wounds' gave the Summer 2019 issue of NUNUM a centre, everything else in the issue sprang from it. So you can imagine how thankful we were to have her with us.

By night and early morning, Samantha N. Simpson writes fiction and nonfiction pieces, some of which have appeared in Kenyon Review, Exhuming Alexandria, Crazyhorse, REAL, and Prism Review. By day, she teaches high school English in the Boston area and leads summer workshops for the Young Writers at Kenyon Program. She lives in Reading, MA, with her husband and small collection of withering houseplants.

​As novelist Zora Neal Hurston so beautifully stated: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
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“What if I don’t ever return to school?” I remember bemoaning on a fast-food run with my best friend, also age 22. That was my key question, and deepest fear, that year.

The Beginning
    Every once in a while it hits me that I’m almost done with the first year of my Ph. D. in Creative Writing at a school that people have actually heard of and one that has a decent reputation. Earlier this week, I had a memory pop up on my social media account that said: “ONE YEAR AGO TODAY:” followed by a post I wrote declaring my commitment to Oklahoma State University. For someone who never expected to go to 

We couldn't have been happier with the Spring 2019 issue for oh so many reasons but way up on the top of that list was having the chance to give Marselienna her first publication with her piece "L.E.D.".

The brevity of the voice and depth of the voice Marselienna brought to life in "L.E.D" is a paradigm of what a great piece of flash fiction can do.

Jordan Faber dreamt up the words, Daniel Ciochina clicked the pics and we blended it into an homage to the grand-daddy of all hustles, the Three Card Monty. 

'Oklahoma '86' is a raw, tight, slice of life roll through a moment most tag as life-changing. Jordan's piece though reminds us all that in the end it usually all comes back to feet up on the dashboard moments and treasures the color of seaweed. 

Charles Finn slipped us a poetically voiced piece of flash fiction for our Spring 2019 issue called 'Giant Heart'. This thoughtful story was a must have for our issue as it captured the honesty and reflection often found in shared out of step gestures of intimacy.  Luckily for us Dave Sims had just given us 'Don't Eat Your Little Buddies' and once we got done blending ... 

NUNUM's first issue of 2019 was fortunate enough to include three private images from Daniel Ciochina. Together his three pieces became the cards that revealed the words of Jordan Faber and together they became the opening story for our Spring 2019 issue 'Oklahoma '86'. 

Should you get an MFA? Only you can answer that question, based on your goals, life situation, and what particular programs might offer you.
But should you pay for an MFA? There’s a question that’s sure to spark a heated conversation. Many, well-known writers (and plenty of lesser known ones) will tell you flat out that no, you should never, pay for an MFA.

A retired educator, Dave Sims now dwells and creates in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. His most recent comix appear in The Nashville Review, Talking Writing, and Freeze Ray, and panels from his digital painting sequence “Somewhere Around the Edges,” appear on the cover and in the Winter 2019 issue of The Raw Art Review. You can find Dave on instagram at tincansims
Dave lent us a few of his pieces for the ...

SQF: Why did you start this magazine?

NUNUM focuses on blending flash fiction with visual art to produce a work which while faithful to both parents is, as all offspring are, unique unto itself. 

This is all we publish, and we do it in order to further explore the idea that both the words of a flash fiction piece and the elements of an image don't exist in a vacuum. A reader's mind isn't blank, it is full of clusters of

Kobina Wright is a second generation California native with a degree in Communications from California State University, Fullerton.  Wright is an artist, writer and entrepreneur and is a board member of The G.R.E.E.N. Foundation, an organization that helps to service the community through health education and navigation to support individuals and families to access quality health care.

Scroll down and see more of Kobina's beautiful lines and colours.

Key encounters have formed Francis's photographic approach to bring him to social contact and staging. He then abandons computer sciences to exploit his bubbling creativity, full of sensitivity. The human being is then at the center of his work, after the fashion of the "Self" (Freud), which lies between unconscious desires and moral standards. Affected by the death of a friend, he undertakes a strong introspection that will highlight neuroses that he crystallizes through nude photography.

​Leah Dockrill's 'It's Just Girl Talk' brought a new level of wherewithal to Ina's 'The Therapist' and together the two of them blended into something that our Winter 2018 Issue simply needed to have included within its pages. 

Ina took us on a trip with her piece 'The Therapist' and showed us all what happens when you blow big whistles. Check out our Winter Issue and find out what happens when the birds got a hold of her ideas. 

MFAs, Their Utility, Etc.

Anything that gets you writing is a good thing. Taken in that light, I’m happy that I spent 3 years earning an MFA. Was the MFA degree totally useful? Probably not. Then again, I didn’t apply for or accept an MFA thinking I would use it as an academic stepping stone to a Ph.D or something like that—I know some people do. But my writing and life philosophy is that after a certain amount of years in school it’s best to move